A Guide to Sentencing in Capital Cases (2007)

The purpose of this manual is to provide judges, prosecutors and defence lawyers with a practical guide to the sentencing phase in capital cases as it has developed around the world and in particular in jurisdictions of the Commonwealth.

The Sentencing Guide is published by The Death Penalty Project and the work was funded by the European Union and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Over 1,250 copies have been distributed for free, mainly, but not exclusively, in Anglophone Africa and the Commonwealth Caribbean where discretionary sentencing takes place. The manual has also been translated into Chinese with the assistance of the Beijing Normal University and into Taiwanese by the British Trade and Cultural Office in Taipei.

The manual attempts to set out:

• The test to be applied when sentencing those who would otherwise have faced a mandatory death sentence.
• The relevant factors in the sentencing exercise.
• The Procedural Issues that arise as a result of a transition from a mandatory capital sentencing system to a discretionary one.

An updated version of the Guide will be published in 2018.